1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to processor-based systems, and, more particularly, to arbitrating bus transactions in processor-based systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication systems typically include one or more base stations or access points for providing wireless connectivity to mobile units in a geographic area (or cell) associated with each base station or access point. Mobile units and base stations communicate by transmitting modulated radiofrequency signals over a wireless communication link, or air interface. The air interface includes downlink (or forward link) channels for transmitting information from the base station to the mobile unit and uplink (or reverse link) channels for transmitting information from the mobile unit to the base station. The uplink and downlink channels are typically divided into data channels, random access channels, broadcast channels, paging channels, control channels, and the like. The uplink and downlink channels may be shared or dedicated.
Mobile units can initiate communication with the base station by transmitting a message on one or more of the random access channels (RACHs). Uplink random access messages are non-synchronized and therefore may be transmitted at any time based on the synchronized downlink timing by any mobile unit within the coverage area of the base station. The receiver in the base station must therefore continuously monitor the random access channels and search the signals received on the random access channels for predetermined sequences of symbols (sometimes referred to as the RACH preamble) in random access messages transmitted by mobile units. To make the search process feasible, the format of the random access messages must be standardized. For example, conventional random access messages in the Universal Mobile Telecommunication Sservices (UMTS) Long Term Evolution (LTE) system are transmitted in a subframe during a transmission time interval (TTI) of 1 ms in 1.08 MHz bandwidth. The random access messages subframe is divided into a 0.8 ms preamble and a 102.6 μs cyclic prefix that includes a copy of a portion of the sequence of symbols in the preamble. The remaining 97.4 μs in the transmission time interval is reserved as a guard time to reduce or prevent inter-symbol interference between different random access messages or shared data channels.
The coverage area of a base station is related to the duration of the cyclic prefix and the guard time. For example, the conventional guard time of approximately 0.1 ms corresponds to a round-trip delay for a signal that travels approximately 15 kilometers. Thus, a random access channel message format that includes approximately 0.1 ms for the guard time is appropriate for reducing or preventing inter-symbol interference for coverage areas or cell sizes having a radius of up to approximately 15 kilometers. Similarly, the duration of the cyclic prefix is related to the size of the coverage area and the propagation channel delay spread. For example, a cyclic prefix of approximately 0.1 ms is suitable for coverage areas having radii of up to approximately 15 kilometers. Although a range of 15 km may be considered sufficient for conventional wireless communication systems, the base station range of proposed wireless communications systems, such as the UMTS LTE, is expected to increase to at least 100 km. Proposals to extend the range of the random access channel supported by base stations include increasing the transmission time interval to 2 ms.
FIG. 1 shows a proposed modification to a random access message 100. In this proposal, the extended transmission time interval includes a 0.8 ms RACH preamble 105. The length of the cyclic prefix (CP) 110 increases in proportion to the desired coverage area. For example, every 0.1 ms of additional cyclic prefix length will account for additional 15 km coverage. The guard time 115 also increases at the same rate as the cyclic prefix length. Thus, with the 0.8 ms RACH preamble, the time available for guard time and cyclic prefix is 2 ms−0.8 ms=1.2 ms. This RACH range extension proposal attempts to reduce the receiver complexity of the RACH preamble detection. However, the range is then extended at the expense of the increased overhead required to transmit the longer cyclic prefix.
FIG. 2 conceptually illustrates one conventional RACH receiver 200. The receiver 200 monitors signals received within the 2 ms transmission time interval of the random access channel. If the mobile unit is very close to the receiver 200, then the subframe may begin very near the beginning of the transmission time interval, as indicated by the subframe 205. However, if the mobile unit is near the edge of the coverage area of the base station, then the subframe may begin very late in the transmission time interval, as indicated by the subframe 210. A conventional preamble detection scheme may be used in this range extension scenario by shifting the starting reference time to the end of extended cyclic prefix, e.g., by shifting the Fast Fourier Transform data collection window by 0.6 ms for a 90 km coverage area, as shown in FIG. 2. The accumulated data can then be processed to search for a peak over a delay of approximately 0.6 ms.